Today was another brew day, our second batch and first batch using all grain rather than malt extract. On the docket today is a nice simple IPA, something to cut our teeth on before we try any fancier all-grain recipes.
We got our kettle up to 163F with 6.25 gallons of water. We can’t actually do full volume mashes for five-gallon batches in our eight-gallon kettle, so we planned on a squeeze/sparge step in the 7.5-gallon kettle which came with our propane burner.
Speaking of, we were planning on an outside brew day, but concerns about temperature loss during the mash (it was well below freezing today) made us wave off, so we took over my friend’s kitchen again, to some grumbling from the wives.
Here’s a spoonful of grain. Mostly ye olde American 2-row malt from the local homebrew store, along with a pound of Munich malt, a pound of Crystal 40, and one ounce of Black Patent for color.
We put the lid on, but still lost temperature pretty quickly. We ended up firing the burners three times during the mash, keeping the temperature between 151F and 160F. Stirring while the burners were on ensured we didn’t do anything stupid like melt the bag to the bottom of the kettle.
Stirring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7iqNuqXL_s
After an hour of mashing, we pulled the kettle off of the stove and lifted the bag out. It made a bit of a mess until we worked out that we had to let it drain by increments, and after that it was fine. After a few minutes of draining into the main kettle, we held the bag up over the kettle to the right and poured about three quarts of water at 160F over the grain cake inside. After it drained, we pressed out whatever else we could get with the lid of a pan. (I’ve heard lots of people say squeezing the bag is bad, but everyone I’ve read who’s actually experimented with it says they can’t tell the difference.)
According to Brewtarget, we ended up with about 80% efficiency, which is much better than I’d expected. We elected to roll with it rather than water down the wort, and ended up with a starting gravity of 1.060. (On that note, we got a refractometer to aid in sample-taking, and after calibrating it against our hydrometer, found it was an excellent tool for the job.)
Not much to say during the boil. We did three hop additions: an ounce of Columbus for bittering, then half an ounce of Willamette at 30 minutes and half an ounce of Willamette at flame out.
Cooling presented a problem; we bought a wort chiller, but it had hose fittings and we were notably not anywhere near a hose.
We ended up hooking our auto-siphon/pump up to the outlet line and running ice water from one sink basin backwards through the chiller to the other. It didn’t slow things down significantly; we were still chilled in about half an hour. Note steam coming from the output.
It was a nice honey yellow flowing through the siphon, and it’s now a dark brown in the fermenter. We plan to let it sit for two and a half weeks or so, with no dry hopping or anything. I stayed for an hour or so after we pitched the yeast (two packages of White Labs California Ale, since we didn’t have time for a starter), and we were already seeing signs of fermentation when I headed out. Hopefully another success!
